Word: kiarostami
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Iran is today's one great national cinema. Not since the Czech New Wave of the mid-'60s has a country made such a lovely noise at the big festivals and in Western capitals where the term foreign film doesn't evoke a yawn. Directors Abbas Kiarostami (A Taste of Cherry), Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon) and Samira's father Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Gabbeh) are as revered in the world film community as they are anonymous at American 'plexes...
This joke, told in Abbas Kiarostami's luminous Taste of Cherry, hints at the spirit of Iran's vital new cinema: knowing, poignant, as simple and universally significant as an Aesop fable. Kiarostami, who is Iran's leading director (Through the Olive Trees) and screenwriter (The White Balloon), tells his tales with the grace and gravity of a wise old man in a village square. Taste of Cherry, which won the top prize at Cannes last year, is the finest of his shaggy-man stories...
...suspense thriller cast as a Socratic conversation. By Hollywood's pulse, the film may amble, but this is a token of its respect for each speaker's beliefs, its refusal to sentimentalize matters of life or death. Let the rest of the movie world ride a rocket to excess; Kiarostami will find a quiet place and listen to a man's heart right until it stops beating. And then he will listen some more...
Panahi, formerly an assistant to Iran's master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (who did the script for The White Balloon), labors under a far more censorious burden than any Hollywood director. Yet his sly comedy is wonderfully open to life's coincidences and consequences; it shows an uncondescending interest in children even as it is alert to their gamin guile. His film deserves viewers, supporters--perhaps even a statuette...